Second British general slams U.S. Iraq policy

A second retired British general slammed the United States over its Iraq policy, saying in a newspaper interview published Sunday that it had been "fatally flawed."

Maj. Gen. Tim Cross, the most senior British officer involved in the postwar planning, said he had raised serious concerns about the possibility of Iraq falling into chaos but said former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the warnings.

"Right from the very beginning we were all very concerned about the lack of detail that had gone into the postwar plan and there is no doubt that Rumsfeld was at the heart of that process," Cross said in the Sunday Mirror newspaper.

In December, President Bush praised Rumsfeld for his service and made no mention of the often-harsh criticism of Rumsfeld. "Every decision Don Rumsfeld made over the past six years, he always put the troops first, and the troops knew it," Bush said.

Gen. Cross, 59, who was deputy head of the coalition's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in 2003, said he had raised concerns about the number of troops on the ground in Iraq but was ignored. "There is no doubt that with hindsight the U.S. postwar plan was fatally flawed and many of us sensed that at the time," Cross said

[AP]